Dean Okamura

In the grace of the world

I do not pretend to understand
the purpose of my trials,
the lesson in the labored step,
agonizing stiff muscles
or unsteadiness of age.

 

It's my first passage of frailty
which youthful memories banished
without thought or care,
the grimness of death dismissed.

 

I'm parked in the field,
exposed to the elements
without protection
from raging storms of decline,
dementia and that other d-word
I cannot recall.

 

It's taken a lifetime
to see uncertainty as a friend
who gives bad advice
but understands me better
than my parents,
loss, regret, or my
closest relations.

 

I reach out for that hand
that exists for times like these
but often
is not there.

 

Note: The title echoes Wendell Berry's poem "The Peace of Wild Things" (1968), which ends with the lines:

 

          For a time
          I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Looking out for ourselves

A sadness crosses weariness
tightening a noose around the knees.
As rigid laced tendons
prevent the body's fullness of movement.

 

The effects earthquake throughout
our tectonic plates. Alarms spread
throughout the nervous network of
psychic neurons foretelling troubles.

 

A knee raises signaling the start
of the resistance movement—rebellion
against the forces of this aging empire.
Every morning battle stretches our will.

 

The weight of such endeavor

borne by every day warriors.

 

Of the wide ocean between us

Portraits made from my uncles' 1919 Japanese passports

 

When I think of visiting relatives in Japan
the land of my grandparents

after losing touch for a century.

 

They know about my grandfather.
A man who left his wife,
his two small children,
(one not yet born)
and never went back.

 

What kind of man does that?
I ask the same.

 

But do I really know
about what happened?
Just stories
lost in silence.

 

I could say,
I am not my grandfather.

 

But can I really defend my grandfather
after running off to America
leaving his family behind?

 

Even though six years later,
my grandparents remarried.
Then my father was born.
And my aunt was born.

 

Does that make it right?
Whatever the answer,
it does not sit right

with everyone.

 

I do not know how to apologize in Japanese
because I do not speak Japanese.

 

But it's my family.